What's wrong with institutions system

[JustMormegil]

Hi folks, played some games on 1.18 and got some concerns ragarding new institutions system. Personally like this change, I'm always for more dynamical game mechanics. But still some aspects feels like being too limited:

1. Birthplaces/Neighbor spread bonus strength. The same ideas/technologies can appear independently in different parts of world. With current concept of single birthplace, its more important to be closer to some virtual institution 'center' rather than fit some institution conditions/triggers. In my games England ofter embraces colonializm later than half of western europe. Russia is the last one in Europe who empraces it, despite of been great colonizer in game and historically. Some geography/religion hardcoded linkages also feels bad. Institution apperance/spreading speed should be less dependent from geography and more - from conditions met.

2. Fixed years of appearance. If I get colonies/colonial nations earlier, why can't I start to spread colonializm? Feels like broken causal relationship. Institution apperance date should depend on conditions met. Yes, it requires some balancing to avoid Enlightenment in 1500.

3. Total development increases embracement cost. Feels like broken causal relationship again. Actually the more developed is province (in terms of population and infrastructure), the faster new ideas will spread there. Institution spread should be slowlier/costlier in low developed provinces.

4. 'Develop' button boost makes provinces development distribution even greater than it was when OPMs developed their provinces like crazy. Situations with 30 development province surrounded by 5 development ones feels so unrealistic. Development level should increase institution spreading speed rather than one time boost from 'develop' button.

5. There is no impact on institution spreading speed from Estates, Enemy/Rival/Ally diplomacy relations and religions.

What is your opinion?

I think that each point can be fixed relatively easy, but that requires separate 'Suggestions' thread.

 

[Lacost]

Hi folks, played some games on 1.18 and got some concerns ragarding new institutions system. Personally like this change, I'm always for more dynamical game mechanics. But still some aspects feels like being too limited:

1. Birthplaces/Neighbor spread bonus strength. The same ideas/technologies can appear independently in different parts of world. With current concept of single birthplace, its more important to be closer to some virtual institution 'center' rather than fit some institution conditions/triggers. In my games England ofter embraces colonializm later than half of western europe. Russia is the last one in Europe who empraces it, despite of been great colonizer in game and historically. Some geography/religion hardcoded linkages also feels bad. Institution apperance/spreading speed should be less dependent from geography and more - from conditions met.

That seems to only be the case for the earlier institutions. Global Trade, Manufactories and Enlightenment are all pretty independent. I guess it is intended so that far away RotW nations fall behind in tech pretty quickly and catch up again after globalism.

And yes, it needs some tweaking for landlocked eastern european nations.

2. Fixed years of appearance. If I get colonies/colonial nations earlier, why can't I start to spread colonializm? Feels like broken causal relationship. Institution apperance date should depend on conditions met. Yes, it requires some balancing to avoid Enlightenment in 1500.

Those dates are important to not mess around with tech penalties. Just imagine a later institutions fires 20 years early and every not embraced nations gets a ticking +2% on tech every year.

4. 'Develop' button boost makes provinces development distribution even greater than it was when OPMs developed their provinces like crazy. Situations with 30 development province surrounded by 5 development ones feels so unrealistic. Development level should increase institution spreading speed rather than one time boost from 'develop' button.

I agree. For large nations with poor provinces (new world natives) it is almost impossible to embrace without heavily developing certain provinces. If you have a coastal center of trade you will never want to develope it unitl global trade fires so you can jump up right to 20+ developement. It is unbalanced and feels really weird.

5. There is no impact on institution spreading speed from Estates, Enemy/Rival/Ally diplomacy relations and religions.

I guess there is that friendly province modifier that gives you spread when a friendly nation is within your sea-tile or borders you. Also I read somewhere that you get an additional bonus if you have a friendly and a hated nation within you sea-tile at the same time.

Also estates are supposed to increase the spread but do this very, very, very slowly. It is more like a barely noticable bonus that is reducing the embracing time by a few months.

Generally I would like to see some increased spread as the time passes on. If it is 1700 and poor iceland is still trying to embrace the printing press something horribly went wrong.

 

[JustMormegil]

Those dates are important to not mess around with tech penalties. Just imagine a later institutions fires 20 years early and every not embraced nations gets a ticking +2% on tech every year.

Yes, but this penalty will be applied to everyone in the world. So why is it bad?

Technically, institutions bring us one more redundant system. I mean, technology bonuses should be linked to institutions directly instead of transitive dependency via Technologies.
In this case, we don't need this ticking penalty. We just need to embrace the institutution, which is clearlier and much easier to manage. We can even have some institution technology bonuses linked to provinces instead of the whole country embracement (like production efficiency).

 

[grommile]

Yes, but this penalty will be applied to everyone in the world. So why is it bad?

Everyone in the world except the Fount of All Knowledge.

 

[JustMormegil]

Everyone in the world except the Fount of All Knowledge.

As I mentioned, Fount of Knowledge concept is wrong too. Anybody should have ability to get institution spreading, if his province fits some conditions.

 

[Oahkoah]

In regards to the friendly neighbour bonus, if I see a country embracing an institution I'll likely try and improve relations with them for that little boost

 

[Trin Tragula]

Just wanted to leave some comments here to help the discussion

1. Birthplaces/Neighbor spread bonus strength. The same ideas/technologies can appear independently in different parts of world. With current concept of single birthplace, its more important to be closer to some virtual institution 'center' rather than fit some institution conditions/triggers. In my games England ofter embraces colonializm later than half of western europe. Russia is the last one in Europe who empraces it, despite of been great colonizer in game and historically. Some geography/religion hardcoded linkages also feels bad. Institution apperance/spreading speed should be less dependent from geography and more - from conditions met.

Just in case you are not aware (as what you say is still entirely true for the earlier ones) the later institutions grow independently all over the world in whatever provinces fit certain criteria. Global Trade spreads from all Centers of Trade and even grows slowly in all provinces with trade buildings. Manufactories spread from all provinces with manufactories and so on.

3. Total development increases embracement cost. Feels like broken causal relationship again. Actually the more developed is province (in terms of population and infrastructure), the faster new ideas will spread there. Institution spread should be slowlier/costlier in low developed provinces.

Institution spread is scaled by development. It spreads _much_ faster through high development provinces than it does through low development ones. Even with the exact same conditions being true high development means it is embraced much faster. The money cost is based on how much of your total development lacks the institution so waiting for that spread through your high development areas can certainly be worth it.

5. There is no impact on institution spreading speed from Estates, Enemy/Rival/Ally diplomacy relations and religions.

Actually loyal burghers help spread Global Trade in their provinces (as you can see in the ingame tooltips), loyal nobles help spread feudalism in their provinces and loyal clergy helps the spread of the Printing Press in their provinces. The boosts may be a bit small though
Diplomatic relations is likely the biggest impact you can have for province to province spread. Friendly (ie not negative relations) countries are the only ones that can spread institutions over water to you and they also have a much higher base spread speed than any other neighbor province would (basically the same as between your own provinces).

 

[JustMormegil]

Just in case you are not aware (as what you say is still entirely true for the earlier ones) the later institutions grow independently all over the world in whatever provinces fit certain criteria. Global Trade spreads from all Centers of Trade and even grows slowly in all provinces with trade buildings. Manufactories spread from all provinces with manufactories and so on.

yes, but once of there provinces still gets embracement for free (birthplace) and starts to spread it around. But yes, Global Trade is balanced better than Renessance/Colonialism.

Institution spread is scaled by development. It spreads _much_ faster through high development provinces than it does through low development ones. Even with the exact same conditions being true high development means it is embraced much faster. The money cost is based on how much of your total development lacks the institution so waiting for that spread through your high development areas can certainly be worth it.

My concern was about the situation, when horde with 20 average 2-2-2 provinces has the same embracement cost as somebody like Holand with 5 average 8-8-8 provinces. Low-developed provinces should have increased embracement cost.

Maybe it would be better to remove global embracement option completely, have ability to speed up embracement in each province separately (by money or MP), and link tech penalty to % of provinces without institution.

Could you please comment #2 and #4? Any plans in 1.19 to address this?

 

[Quaade]

@Trin Tragula, there are some oddities in the spread of institutions... Like more than one bordering province doesn´t speed up the process... Why wouldn´t it be just a bit faster when two, instead of one province borders it? If you have a friendly (your own) province adjacent by land or sea, and a neighbour who has a province adjacent to you but embrace it... That province will get influenced by both modifiers...

 

[Trin Tragula]

My concern was about the situation, when horde with 20 average 2-2-2 provinces has the same embracement cost as somebody like Holand with 5 average 8-8-8 provinces. Low-developed provinces should have increased embracement cost.

The same cost maybe but if they just wait a little Holland will get the spread in their high development provinces pretty quickly for free (and thus reducted from the total embracement money cost) while the horde will still have many years to go before it spreads through their 2 2 2 provinces.

 

[Trin Tragula]

@Trin TragulaThat province will get influenced by both modifiers...

Yup and that's a bug that we will be fixing
The friendly one should always take precedent but you should never have both at once.

 

[Quaade]

Yup and that's a bug that we will be fixing
The friendly one should always take precedent but you should never have both at once.

It sort of makes sense though, that the more provinces that touch the province would make it easier to embrace... The modifier could be only a slight increase

 

[Trin Tragula]

Could you please comment #2 and #4? Any plans in 1.19 to address this?

I don't want that to keep you guys from discussing it which is why I didn't adress it
There are no plans to change either right now (I will note that it's not 100% guaranteed to pop at the year it becomes available, but the variance is pretty small and it can never happen ahead of the listed year so I don't think it's that relevant to your suggestion).

 

[$ilent_$trider]

The only problem that I have with institutions is how quick the native american nations can get them once they border a colony. I tried to see some way of balancing this, and perhaps it could work for the ROTW as well, but perhaps there could be a penalty of institution spreading if the province bordering you is not from the same tech group.
The reasoning behind this would be the usual stance of the people refusing 'foreign ways' but once a country from the same tech group embraces the institution it would be like the other countries of the same tech group seeing how they can embrace that foreign concept into their own culture without losing (too much) of their old ways.

This way, you wouldn't see spread of institution as insane as it is right now where by 1821 every nation in the world is "westernized" (I know it doesn't exist anymore, but embracing all institutions will mean the same).

 

[Vulkandrache]

My concern was about the situation, when horde with 20 average 2-2-2 provinces has the same embracement cost as somebody like Holand with 5 average 8-8-8 provinces. Low-developed provinces should have increased embracement cost.

I hope thats a typo yes?

Until someone can give me a reasonable explanation for the opposite ill stand by my oppinion that the base spread from province to provine is too slow for all institutions.

In your example, even if we assume bad province placement (in a line),
Holland will have its embracement cost reduced by 20% every few years as the growth in provinces with 20+ Dev is quite fast.
By the time Holland can embrace it for FREE the Horde will still be waiting for it to finish growing in the second or third province.

 

[Azhcristokos]

Honestly, I think that institutions are pretty great and need relatively few fixes. The biggest problem for me is what $ilent_$trider said: North and South American tribes get to advance way too quickly. It makes the Exploration CB useless and takes a bit too much of the challenge out of playing in the New World. I've had great success in keeping up, though admittedly that is a lot easier if you play in Africa or far, far East Asia.

I've also heard that you can only spawn Colonialism if you have a colonial nation, but I spawned it twice while playing in Africa when I had only colonized some deserted islands and one province or two provinces in Brazil.

 

[hashinshin]

I think the bigger problem is it's often better to develop land and buy the institution than it is to ever wait for it to spread through your land. This leads to some countries being forced to go tall to compete and the AI not understanding that. Leading to things like Russia with +200% technology costs for the AI.

Russia's 20% institution spread was supposed to be some huge thing, and it's just... not.

 

[Vulkandrache]

Well 20% bonus ontop of "not much" is still "not much".

Depending on the institution you are looking at a basespread of maybe 0,4/month in a 6 Dev province.
Some 40+ years. Thats insane.
Adding the usual % and 20% extra you can push that down to maybe 25 years. Thats still a joke.
In my book the worst provinces should take no more then 12-15 years. With the really good ones being done in under 5.

My real fear with the institution system is, that someone at Paradox seems to think the "pump province get institution" mechanic is somehow a fantastic strategic tool.

 

[earlofbrigand]

I like it. It's the first iteration so I'm sure it will get tweaked as time goes on...plus it's a boon for modders.

My suggestions for improvement..(note - many of these repeat what the OP said!)

1. No fixed times for spawning. If Ming starts using its cash to build manufactures the minute they can be built - why not start off a probability ticker to spawn over there? Why every 50 years?
2. Greater chance of spreading to ports/natural harbours and river provinces - makes sense
3. Innovation ideas should help promote it more. 10% innovation cost reduction is useful - but chance of spread/spawn/growth would be more realistic
4. Bigger bonuses for the province that spawns the institution - why not?!

 

[grommile]

1. No fixed times for spawning. If Ming starts using its cash to build manufactures the minute they can be built - why not start off a probability ticker to spawn over there? Why every 50 years?

The 50 year interval for activation meshes nicely with the 50 year cap on the penalty from missing an institution.